Freeze + close the store! A group of Amazon sellers are in trouble again

Amazon has always taken strong measures to deal with counterfeit products. Recently, a group of sellers were sued and their stores were frozen for selling counterfeit products.

Amazon filed a lawsuit and a number of sellers’ stores were frozen!

On July 17, Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) filed a lawsuit against counterfeiters on the platform.

It is understood that this lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, with case number 2:23-cv-01060. The reason for the lawsuit is that CCU believes that these sellers attempted to promote and sell counterfeit Fire TV remote control products on the Amazon platform, which deceived consumers and infringed Amazon's intellectual property rights.

It is worth mentioning that CCU has previously jointly filed similar lawsuits with many brands, but this is the first time that CCU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Amazon brands and Amazon products. CCU believes that these sellers of counterfeit goods have seriously disrupted the market order and attempted to undermine the integrity of the products on the Amazon platform.

It is understood that Fire TV is the first self-branded TV launched by Amazon in 2014. As the earliest Internet technology brand to deploy streaming TV, Amazon's Fire TV TV devices have been widely welcomed by a large number of consumers. So far, the global sales of Fire TV devices have exceeded 200 million units, and Fire TV users watch streaming content for billions of hours each month.

Amazon's internal investigation found that the Fire TV remote control products sold by these illegal sellers counterfeited the Amazon Smile trademark, but these products were not produced or authorized by Amazon. These counterfeit products, whether in terms of external and internal plastic bodies, buttons, or circuit board components and structures, are very different from the genuine products, and the product quality is not guaranteed.

Kebharu Smith, director of Amazon's counterfeit crime department , said that in 2022, CCU and dozens of brands jointly sued more than 1,300 illegal sellers on the platform. However, this lawsuit is the first lawsuit filed by CCU to protect Amazon products. From this, it can be seen that CCU's supervision of the platform is not only aimed at independent brands, but also at Amazon's products. Next, CCU will join forces with Fire TV to hold those counterfeit sellers accountable.

The latest development is that Amazon has frozen the accounts of these illegal sellers, and proactively notified consumers who purchased counterfeit Fire TV remote controls and provided refunds.

The frequent sale of counterfeit goods by platform sellers has always been a headache for Amazon. With the surge in counterfeit products, it not only affects consumers' trust in the platform, but Amazon will also face legal problems due to poor supervision.

Therefore, Amazon has been making every effort to crack down on counterfeit and shoddy products on the platform.

In the past year, Amazon seized and disposed of more than 6 million counterfeit products worldwide , which is twice the number in 2021.

In its annual brand protection report, Amazon said its team fighting counterfeits has 15,000 employees, including software developers, data scientists and researchers.

In order to prevent counterfeit goods from entering the platform, Amazon has adopted automatic protection technology. In 2022, Amazon's regulatory system prevented bad actors from opening new accounts more than 800,000 times. Before these bad sellers list their products for sale, Amazon's regulatory system will conduct a comprehensive review, and more than 99% of counterfeit product lists will be screened out by Amazon's automatic protection technology for blocking or deletion.

In recent years, Amazon has been committed to protecting the intellectual property rights of brands and strictly prohibiting the sale of counterfeit products on its platform.

At the same time, Amazon is also constantly strengthening its cooperation with Chinese law enforcement agencies. At the end of last year, Chinese police destroyed three counterfeiting dens based on information provided by Amazon and seized a total of more than 240,000 counterfeit goods.

These include 130,000 counterfeit auto parts and counterfeit brand labels, nearly 80,000 counterfeit luxury goods and more than 30,000 counterfeit clothing items. These counterfeit goods infringe the intellectual property rights of many well-known brands such as BMW, Porsche and Puma.

Well-known brands crack down on counterfeiting, and nearly a thousand listings have been removed from the shelves!

As we all know, the international market attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights. If overseas sellers' products are involved in infringement lawsuits, they will face very serious consequences.

The Amazon platform clearly requires that any product sold on the Amazon website must be authentic, and the sale of unauthorized copies, pirated, and counterfeit products is prohibited.

If someone complains about selling counterfeit goods on the Amazon platform, the seller’s account can easily be suspended by Amazon and the funds will be frozen. If the seller is sued by the brand, the consequences will be even more serious.

Recently, well-known brands have taken action to protect their rights and fight against counterfeiting! A large number of Amazon sellers’ listings have been removed from the shelves!

Canon has always been very aware of the protection of intellectual property rights, especially keeping a close eye on major e-commerce platforms. Its laser toner cartridge products alone have been repeatedly removed from the shelves due to infringement issues, and many third-party sellers' listings have been deleted.

Recently, Canon once again took legal action to combat counterfeiting, and a large number of Amazon sellers’ listings were removed from the shelves.

This time, Canon asked Amazon to remove some printer toner cartridges from its website because it believed that these sellers infringed Canon's intellectual property rights.

In the report submitted, Canon listed a large number of infringing listings and accused these unscrupulous sellers of infringing its U.S. Patent No. 1,314,19 by selling printer toner cartridges. Canon also asked Amazon to immediately remove the related products sold on the platform.

It is understood that the Amazon website has deleted the above counterfeit products.

In fact, this is not the first time Canon has submitted an infringement report to Amazon.

Since June 2018, Canon has submitted a large number of infringement reports to Amazon and successfully deleted 31,116 infringing listings. Every quarter, Canon, which attaches great importance to intellectual property rights, submits infringement reports to Amazon and requests it to remove related products involved in infringement.

In the first quarter of this year, Canon used the Report Violation Tool (RAV) to report to Amazon a number of infringing listings on the platform, including six sites in Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands.

Specifically, there are 165 listings involved in the French Amazon site, 157 listings in the German and Italian sites, 137 listings in the Spanish site, 134 listings in the UK site, and 123 listings in the Netherlands site.

Canon has many products, including printers, cameras, camcorders, copiers, fax machines, image scanners, etc. Its brand influence is obvious to all. For this reason, some sellers are lucky enough to make a fortune through non-compliant operations, but this actually lays hidden dangers for themselves.

Because Canon currently owns a large number of product patents and attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights. If sellers want to sell related products, they must be careful to avoid infringement risks.

In short, sellers on the Amazon platform must establish brand compliance awareness in their daily operations and never touch Amazon's minefields, so as not to lose more than the gains.

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Fighting against counterfeiting